A mother of three who has been diagnosed with stage four skin cancer is urging young people not to make the same mistake she made in her twenties.
Claire Turner, 43, was diagnosed with cutaneous malignant melanoma in January, when she discovered the disease had spread to her liver, thighs, lymph nodes and shoulders.
“I used a sun bed and I got sunburned while trying to get a tan,” Turner, who is from Oxfordshire, England, told Kennedy News.
Britt says she now makes it her mission to make people aware of the dangers of sun beds and other forms of UV exposure.
He declared, “Sun damage caused my cancer; it could have been avoided.” “It’s about protecting and taking care of your skin before anything appears. “Fake tan doesn’t last and real tan doesn’t last, but which one is safer?”
Turner says he first sought medical treatment after experiencing pain in his right shoulder last December.
Doctors initially believed it was a torn ligament, but the accountant became concerned a few weeks later when she noticed a slight swelling on her shoulder blade.
After undergoing an MRI scan, Turner was referred to the sarcoma unit and faced an agonizing wait until Christmas awaiting a diagnosis.
“It was horrible, it was so horrible, I was expecting the worst,” she recalled. “I went down the Google rabbit hole. This is the worst thing you can do when you have a potential diagnosis looming over you. I was in the depths of despair.”
Sadly, Turner’s worst fears were confirmed. She had cancer – and it was very advanced.
“I was just nervous. It took me over the edge, I was shocked,” she declared emotionally. “I came away knowing it was stage four.”
The mother was given three rounds of immunotherapy to shrink her tumor, but it had to be stopped in August due to swelling in her pituitary gland and optic nerve.
A scan that same month revealed that some of the spread had spread to his lungs.
“I was leased, I just didn’t know it at first,” she announced. “I think if I had known I wouldn’t have been able to breathe right away, but it would have been panic and anxiety rather than cancer.”
While treatments have slowed the spread and even caused some of her tumors to disappear, Turner is taking each day as it comes.
And despite the uncertainty, she’s still enjoying some sunshine, with precautions in place.
“I still sit in the sun but I will sit in the shade,” she said, urging others to cover their faces. “I will not wear a hat or my shoulders will be bare. It’s just about knowing.”
